Achaeology Museum

National Archaeology Museum

The current National Archaeology Museum (MNA) was founded in 1893 by José Leite de Vasconcelos. In its more than one hundred years of existence the Museum has become the institution of reference in Portuguese archaeology and has regular exchanges with other museums, universities and investigation centres around the world.

The museum's collection includes the initial collections of its founder and Estácio de Veiga. Numerous others have since joined these: some that were incorporated from other State departments (for example: archaeological collections from the former Portuguese royal family that came to the Museum after the proclamation of the Portuguese Republic; and archaeological collections from the former Museum of Fine Arts, which were incorporated when the current National Museum of Old Art was established); others that were donated or bequeathed by collectors and friends of the Museum (for example, donations by Bustorff Silva, Luís Bramão, Samuel Levy, amongst others); and others still that have come about thanks to the intensive field work the Museum itself and other archaeologists have carried out. The Museum has also benefitted from government orders under applicable laws whenever the value of archaeological assets discovered in the country required such action.

Conceived by its founder to be a kind of "Museum of Portuguese Man", the MNA continues to pursue its original vocation - that of telling the history of settlement in Portugal from its earliest manifestations to the creation of the Portuguese nation.